your purpose was, from the beginning?’ Rhiannon asked timidly.
The shrouded figured nodded. Or at least moved, which Rhiannon took to be a nod.
‘My job gets passed down from generation to generation. My father did this before me and his grandfather before him,’ said De Ath.
‘But,’ said Rhiannon, confused. ‘Aren’t you immortal? I mean, from yourself?’
De Ath shook his head. ‘I’m not a God,’ he said. ‘Only Gods are immortal. I am just something that has always been around. Not me myself, that is. But what I am. Because life exists, there has to be someone like me that exists as well. Otherwise…’ he trailed off. ‘Otherwise it would just get too crowded,’ it shrugged thin shoulders under folds of loose fabric.
There was the sound of a small chime. De Ath looked at his wrist, as if looking at a watch. ‘Must go,’ he said. ‘My break is over.’
‘How do you even have time for a break?’ asked Rhiannon. ‘Aren’t there billions of people on the earth that need…’ she paused. ‘Your services?’
Death shook his head again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s more than just me. There’s one of me in every different culture. We have a very large family. They like to travel.’
Luke looked up from his card game. ‘So you’re not like Santa Claus, then? You don’t go all over the world in one day and…do what you do. Cause souls to…move on?’
There was a strange hollow sound and Rhiannon and Luke realized it was De Ath laughing. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘That’s impossible. To do all that, to do what I do for the whole world,’ He laughed again a sound like the rustling of dry paper, shaking his hooded head and getting up from the chair. And then he was gone.
‘Well,’ said Luke getting up from his table. ‘I guess my break is over too.’
‘Where do you work?’ Rhiannon asked getting up from the broken couch.
‘I’m a classroom assistant,’ Luke said.
Rhiannon looked confused and was about to ask what a classroom assistant was when Luke explained.
‘There’s lots of different types of classrooms - the souls all need to learn different things before they can move on again to live a different life. They need to learn from the mistakes they’ve made that put them down here.’
‘You mean like murderers and things?’ asked Rhiannon wide eyed.
‘Yeah, them and anyone else that’s done anything bad enough to be sent here to the Underworld.’ said Luke. ‘They have to learn what’s wrong somehow, or else they’ll just keep doing the same things and keep ending up back here,’ he said. ‘And there’s only so much space down here.’
‘And are there…’ Rhiannon hesitated. ‘Punishments?’ she nearly whispered.
‘You mean like pushing a giant rock up a massive mountain and then having it roll back down to the bottom again and having to do it all over again for centuries?’
Rhiannon nodded.
‘Yeah, there’s those things too. Only to get people to learn their lessons hands on. Give them time to think about what they’ve done. We only do that kind of stuff to people who are down here for hundreds of years at a time. Or repeat offenders.’ said Luke.
‘Oh,’ said Rhiannon.
‘Yeah. So it’s not punishment for punishment’s sake,’ said Luke. ‘We aren’t that mean!’ he said, laughing again. ‘We are the underworld but we’ve got a bad reputation over time, I think’.’
Just then a thin man in a ill fitting charcoal suit with glasses and dark hair plastered back against his head came into the room. Luke barely said a goodbye and ran out of the room, avoiding eye contact with the man.
‘Who are you?’ the reedy man thundered in a deep voice. Rhiannon wasn’t expecting a voice like that to come out of a man like him. He looked more like a timid accountant, but sounded like a intimidating monster thought Rhiannon.
‘I’m Rhiannon. A new demi-goddess in the Records Department,’ she said.
‘Demi-goddess eh?’ grumbled the man, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘Who are your parents?’
‘Well, my father is a human but my mother is Nehalennia, Goddess of seafarers and fertility and abundance,’ said Rhiannon proudly.
‘Is that right?’ said the small man rubbing his cleanly shaved chin. ‘Well do you know who I am?’
Rhiannon shook her head. ‘No’.
‘I am Arawn,’ he said.
Rhiannon’s eyes widened. She didn’t know what to do. She grabbed the sides of her gown and did a low curtsey. ‘I’m sorry, sir!’ she said flustered and looked down at the floor. ‘I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t recognize you. I didn’t think you’d look…’ she trailed off.
‘Like this?’ he laughed, his laughter feeling like it shook the small room they stood in.
Rhiannon didn’t dare look up at him, but she nodded briskly.
‘I don’t really look like this,’ said Arawn. ‘But since I am God of the Underworld, I can choose to look however I want. And I find this look quite humorous.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I find it amusing looking like an unassuming accountant. It throws people off.’
Rhiannon continued to stare at the floor.
‘And accountants are evil people, you know,’ the God went on. ‘So it fits.’ He lifted Rhiannon’s face up so she was looking at him. ‘And I find this doesn’t scare the staff so much, looking like this.’ he said. ‘I am trying to run a business after all. And businesses require order and efficiency. Not chaos. I don’t want people not doing their job because they are scared of me.’ He chuckled again, a deep rumbling radiating out of the small frame.
‘Well, daughter of the Goddess of seafarers,’ he said putting a hand on her shoulder. Rhiannon willed herself not to flinch under his touch.. ‘I hope you enjoy your time here,’ he said. ‘It’s a good place.’ He looked around the room almost fondly. ‘I like it.‘ And then before she could say anything else, he was gone.
Rhiannon took a deep breath and walked out of the small break room back into the dark cavernous space that was the Underworld, and walked right into chaos.
She ran over to the little blue demon that was at the desk next to her closed one and asked what was happening, ducking just in time to avoid a large winged creature swooping down from overhead.
The little demon eyed her with bright yellow eyes and gave a movement Rhiannon thought must have been a shrug. ‘How do I know?’ it rasped. ‘I just work here.’
Rhiannon ran in the direction of a dome like structures a little ways away. ‘These must be the classrooms,’ she thought as she got closer. The domes were all interconnected with enclosed pathways. It looked to her like a big network of honeycomb. She walked down a main hallway and off the side were doorways to different rooms. She glanced into some of the rooms as she walked. They were filled with people. Some sitting at desks, some sitting on the ground with legs crossed, some standing in circles or in rows. She noticed some of the instructors were humans, probably demi-gods or goddesses like herself. Others were demonic looking creatures with scales, wings or fangs. When she reached the end of the hallway she found herself in a large central circular atrium. Like the centre of a wheel with the domed rooms radiating out like spokes. At the centre of this large empty dome was a desk. At the desk sat a girl who looked not much older than Rhiannon herself.
Rhiannon ran the last few feet up to the lady at the desk. The lady looked up from a book. ‘Hello, how can I help you?’ she asked politely.
‘I’m looking for Luke. He works here,’ Rhiannon said.
The woman looked mildly irritated. ‘I see. Do you know where he works?’
‘No, but he’s a demi-God,’ said Rhiannon, ‘So he’d be just an assistant’.
‘Everyone that teaches here is an Assistant,’ said the woman, looking down at her long bright red neatly manicured nails.
‘He’s named after Lugh,’ said Rhiannon, remembering the one thing that Luke had told her about himself. ‘Some Irish god’.
‘Mmmm,’ mumble
d the woman getting up from her chair. she walked over to a large book on the other side of the circular desk. Rhiannon could see a small feathered tail jutting out from under the woman’s skirt. Demon, then, she thought.
‘He mentioned something about being a teacher, or giving out the punishments?’ said Rhiannon.
The woman scanned the book and then slammed it shut. ‘Yes, Luke. He’s in the punishments ward today,’ said the woman. ‘That way,’ she said, pointing down another long corridor jutting off at an angle. ‘It’s the 21st door on the right,’ she said. ‘You’ll find him in there.’ Rhiannon started to walk in that direction when the woman shouted out, ‘Be careful! Sometimes there are unexpected things.’ Rhiannon nodded and headed down the corridor. Unlike the corridor she had come down, all the doors here were shut. She could hear strange and unsettling noises coming from behind the doors as she walked. She heard more than one scream. Rhiannon began to walk faster, looking at the numbers above each door until she found 21. She went to put her hand on the door knob to open it, then decided against it and knocked. A few seconds passed and Rhiannon was about to knock again when the door opened a sliver. She saw Luke’s dark hair and green eyes looking out of the crack. ‘Yes?’ he asked.
‘It’s me, Rhiannon,’ she said. ‘From the break room, remember? I’m the new Records Department Assistant.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Luke opening the door slightly wider. From behind him she saw movement and tried to look over Luke’s shoulder to see